One moment, Eileen Peskoff was enjoying a hot dog after
running with the bulls at a Petersburg, Virginia, racetrack.
Then she was on her back, knocked down when a 4-foot drone
filming the event in August lost control and dove into the
grandstands where she was sitting.

“You sign up for something called running the bulls, you
think the only thing you’ll get hurt by is a 1,200-pound bull,
not a drone,” Peskoff said in an interview.

Drones flown for a business purpose, like the one that left
Peskoff and two friends with bruises, are prohibited in the U.S.
That hasn’t stopped an invasion of flights far beyond the
policing ability of the Federal Aviation Administration, which
since 2007 hasn’t permitted commercial drones in the U.S. while
it labors to write rules to allow them.

Drones have nonetheless been used to film scenes in the
Martin Scorsese-directed movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” and
sporting events for Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN. They’ve inspected
oilfield equipment, mapped agricultural land and photographed
homes and neighborhoods for real estate marketing, according to
industry officials, company websites and videos on the Internet.

All such flights in the U.S. are outside the rules. While
the FAA hasn’t ruled out granting commercial-use permits under
limited circumstances, it has so far only allowed operations in
the Arctic.

Ignorance, Avoidance

Some operators plead ignorance of the rules. Some say their
flying is legal under exemptions for hobbyists. Using drones is
so lucrative for Hollywood that they’re flown knowing they’re
illegal, said one operator who declined to be identified.

The FAA is aware the number of flights is increasing and
tells users to stop when it learns about them, it said in an e-mailed response to questions. The agency said it’s considering
new guidance on what’s permitted.

For every time the FAA orders an operator to stand down --
as it did after a Michigan florist did a test delivery by drone
Feb. 8, and in January with Lakemaid Beer, which posted a video
online proposing 12-pack deliveries to Minnesota ice fishermen -
- untold others fly below the radar, said Patrick Egan, a
Sacramento, California-based author and producer of an annual
unmanned aircraft expo in San Francisco.

Small drones available on the Internet or at hobby stores
for less than $1,000 -- some equipped with high-definition
cameras like those made by San Mateo, California-based GoPro
Inc. -- are flooding the U.S. and being used by tens of
thousands of people, whether legal or not, Egan said.

Airliners, Drones

The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an investigation
on March 4 after pilots on an Alitalia SpA Boeing Co. 777
nearing New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport spotted
a multirotor copter that came within about 200 feet (61 meters).

At least six other pilots, including a crew on another
airliner, have reported close calls since September 2011 with
what they believed were small unmanned aircraft like those
favored by hobbyists, cinematographers and other businesses,
according to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System, which logs
safety issues.

While the government needs to do more to control the growth
in drones, it has been “swamped” by political cross-currents
and budget cuts that have made it difficult to craft rules, Doug
Davis, who ran the FAA’s unmanned aircraft office in the
mid-2000s, said in an interview.

‘No Way’

As airline pilot unions call for strict standards on the
qualifications of drone operators, industry advocates including
Egan say the standards should be eased. Lawmakers such as
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who said
protesters flew toy drones outside her house last year, have
pressed the FAA to add privacy requirements as it crafts safety
rules.

“The FAA is going to have to step up the enforcement of
people who use these things,” Sean Cassidy, national safety
coordinator for the Air Line Pilots Association, said in an
interview. ALPA is the largest pilots union in North America.

The FAA conducted 17 enforcement actions for illegal drone
use in the 13 months that ended in July 2013, according to
agency data that doesn’t include informal steps like phone
calls. It has issued one fine, which is being contested.

The FAA, set up to enforce manned aviation, doesn’t have
the resources to enforce existing rules on a new form of flying
that isn’t tied to airports and requires so little training
almost anyone can do it, Davis said.

“The reality is there is no way to patrol it,” Davis
said. “There’s just no way.”

Scorsese’s ‘Wolf’

Some businesses flying drones make little attempt to hide
what they’re doing.

Freefly Cinema, an aerial photography company in Los
Angeles and Seattle, has photos on its website of helicopter
drones it says it flew to film scenes for “The Wolf of Wall
Street” and a commercial for Honda Motor Co.

Tabb Firchau of Freefly declined to comment in an e-mail.
Rebecca Cook at the public relations company 42West LLC, which
represents Scorsese, didn’t respond to e-mails requesting a
comment.

A Freefly drone shot footage for a documentary about the
U.S. Civil War battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, that aired on
most Public Broadcasting Service stations in the U.S. in
November, the filmmaker, Jake Boritt, said in an interview.

Boritt said he got permission to film from the U.S.
National Park Service. “It’s not something that we did a whole
lot of research into,” Boritt said.

The park service, which controls access to the Gettysburg
site and not the airspace, didn’t check with FAA about aviation
regulations, Katie Lawhon, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Worth It

While ESPN hasn’t used drones to film events, some
independent production companies supplying video to the network
have, Josh Krulewitz, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. ESPN is
telling production companies it works with to comply with
regulations, Krulewitz said. He didn’t specify events at which
drones were used.

For Hollywood, the benefits of using drones are worth the
miniscule risk of being caught, said an operator who films
scenes for TV shows and commercials. He asked to be unidentified
because the practice isn’t permitted.

An unmanned aircraft system costing a few thousand dollars
or less can replace dollies, booms and stabilization equipment
costing tens of thousands, this operator said.

Surf’s Up

Eric Sterman, of Haleiwa, Hawaii, on Oahu’s North Shore,
created a stir this year in the surfing world with a series of
drone-shot videos of some of the world’s best surfers.

Sterman’s videos show wave riding at Oahu’s Banzai Pipeline
and Maui’s Pe’ahi Jaws, filmed by a remote-controlled copter
that floats above the waves. In one, filmed this year, his drone
hovered next to a piloted helicopter also filming.

Sterman said in an e-mail he didn’t go near the helicopter.
“I’m just having fun filming as a hobby and sharing it with
friends and followers,” he said. Sterman, who lists a
professional photo agency on his Vimeo.com page, said he wasn’t
paid for any of his drone video work.

Flying model aircraft is permitted provided it’s for
recreation only, the FAA said in a written response to
questions. In a 1981 advisory, the FAA said these unmanned
aircraft should be flown no higher than 400 feet and away from
populated areas. It also said they shouldn’t be flown near
planes and helicopters, and that operators can’t use the
hobbyist exemption to fly commercially.

‘High Concern’

Flying a drone next to a helicopter violates safety
protocols, Matthew Zuccaro, president of Helicopter Association
International, an Alexandria, Virginia-based trade group, said
in an interview.

“We have a very high concern that there are people
operating unmanned vehicles without our knowledge and without
communications,” Zuccaro said.

Asked by the Australian surfing publication Swellnet.com
about the regulations, Sterman said, “I know you can fly them
as a hobby. But no, I really don’t know the rules at all,”
according to a Jan. 15 story.

The drone that hit Eileen Peskoff and two friends, Brad
Fillius and Patrick Lewis, on Aug. 24 is owned by Scott Hansen,
a Virginia Beach filmmaker.

Hansen was hired to produce aerial views of the event for a
promotional video, Rob Dickens, chief operating officer of The
Great Bull Run LLC, said in an interview.

The drone was operated by an employee of a local hobby
shop, according to the FAA. Hansen wasn’t at the event, Dickens
said.

Quad-Copter, GoPro

Peskoff said Hansen told her some of the batteries died. He
wrote her a check for her medical bills afterward, Peskoff said.
Hansen didn’t return three phone messages left at his production
company, Digital Thunderdome.

The FAA said it spoke with the operator and the hobby
shop’s owner to explain the rules, and the owner agreed to
provide training for customers who purchase model drones.
Additional enforcement action is still being considered, the
agency said in a statement.

“It was kind of lucky,” Peskoff said. “The place was
filled with young people. It hit three adults instead of a
child.”

Also filming that day was a drone being flown for ESPN’s
Kenny Mayne’s Wider World of Sports show, Matt Doyle, executive
producer and director of Big Brick Productions in Manchester,
New Hampshire, said in an interview.

The production company has used drones to film commercials
and feature shows for ESPN, and hasn’t looked into the legal
restrictions, Doyle said.

“It seems like everyone and their mother has a quad-copter
and a GoPro attached to it,” he said. “It’s not just a
production company.”

Vague Rules

GoPro, which filed for a U.S. initial public offering last
week, makes cameras that surfers, skiers and sky divers use to
record their exploits. Katie Kilbride, a spokeswoman, said the
company declined to comment on drone operations and safety.

Drone advocates like Egan and the Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International, an Arlington, Virginia-based
trade group, said the FAA’s drone standards are vague and helped
lead to the explosion of users pushing the envelope.

“AUVSI is certainly concerned that the longer FAA takes to
write the safety rules for small unmanned aircraft, the more
difficult it will become to regulate this industry,” Ben
Gielow, general counsel of the group, said in an interview.

‘Careless, Reckless’

The FAA had planned to propose rules by 2011 allowing
commercial flights with drones weighing less than 55 pounds (25
kilograms). The agency now doesn’t expect to unveil the proposal
until November.

The agency also isn’t expected to meet a Congress-imposed
deadline to craft rules for safely integrating unmanned aircraft
into the nation’s airspace by 2015, the Transportation
Department’s inspector general said in a report Feb. 5.

Even without those regulations, the FAA says it has the
authority to prohibit commercial unmanned aircraft operations
and “careless or reckless” flights by drones, which it calls
unmanned aerial systems or UAS.

On Feb. 12, for example, an FAA inspector called Wesley
Berry, chief executive officer of Flower Delivery Express LLC in
Commerce, Michigan, after the company posted a video showing a
drone delivering flowers to a home, Berry said in an interview.
The tests, which showed the technology wasn’t ready for routine
deliveries, were shut down, Berry said.

‘Genie Out’

“We are concerned about any UAS operation that poses a
hazard to other aircraft or to people and property on the
ground,” the agency said in a statement.

After the agency fined a Swiss man $10,000 for flying a
drone over a Virginia university in 2011, the only fine the FAA
has issued, his lawyer argued there were no regulations that
applied. An administrative law judge hasn’t ruled on the appeal.

The number of civilian unmanned aircraft will reach 175,000
by 2035, most of them smaller models, a report by the Cambridge,
Massachusetts-based Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
found. Many such aircraft, such as the DJI Phantom 2, are
already on the market.

“All of these people are out there flying trying to make a
buck,” Egan said. “The genie is definitely out of the
bottle.”